cocos island knives are back
i found this one form a recent auction in new zealand. and in fact there is another in an australian auction that looks like it might just be one as well
also in the 50s or 60s the cocos islands issued stamps with blacksmiths shown on the stamps . considering the agricultural nature of the plantation island there must have been busy that combined with the troops during the war..

we should really just call some office on the east island there and see if any of the local malays know who made this stuff
there is about 600 malays there so somebody should probably know immediately who the blacksmith family use to be.

Photobucket now charges $400.00 for pics uploaded to their site to be hosted on third party servers! That is probably why the pic shown by ausjulius (I suspect one of mine) is showing that error message--I refuse to pay that amount simply to enable third party hosting which previously had been permitted free!

I have downloaded my pics from that site and post them directly here. The original thread that had these pics was posted more than a decade ago, before the policy on directly loading files to this site came into operation. All the more reason to have the pics posted here for future reference.

Photobucket now charges $400.00 for pics uploaded to their site to be hosted on third party servers!

damn.. well no more photobucket for me.. that site was becoming so slow and nonfunctional that it s almost useless anyway.

these knives are really quite interesting you can see images and video footage of various clunies-ross wearing these as well.

the Malays there came some time in the 1860s i think before there was a mix if madagascan and south african coloured and Malay convicts...

they must have been contracted in a relatively compact group and brought their blacksmiths with them..

im just imagining some weird hybrid Madagascan or african weapons being made by a malay blacksmith.. or maybe a hybrid drik knife for the original clunies-ross heheh.

but really this is a mystery that i think we can solve with a few phone calls..
i think today im going to look in a phone directory for the cocos islands and make some calls there and see if any local people might know who were the makers of these and when they stopped making them!

There may be a more dark explanation as to how Malay or Melanesian people ended up in the Cocos Keeling Islands in the 19th C. There was a practice in northern Australia of "blackbirding" native people of the Torres Strait Islands and nearby into forced labor on sugar plantations, etc. This was essentially a form of slavery. An ugly part of Australian history that also included indigenous groups (Aborigines).

I don't know the history of the Cocos Keeling Islands well enough to say whether the Malay inhabitants went there voluntarily or not, but the Clunies-Ross family ruled these islands with absolute authority before they became part of Australia.

but really this is a mystery that i think we can solve with a few phone calls..
i think today im going to look in a phone directory for the cocos islands and make some calls there and see if any local people might know who were the makers of these and when they stopped making them!

There may be a more dark explanation as to how Malay or Melanesian people ended up in the Cocos Keeling Islands in the 19th C. There was a practice in northern Australia of "blackbirding" native people of the Torres Strait Islands and nearby into forced labor on sugar plantations, etc. This was essentially a form of slavery. An ugly part of Australian history that also included indigenous groups (Aborigines).

I don't know the history of the Cocos Keeling Islands well enough to say whether the Malay inhabitants went there voluntarily or not, but the Clunies-Ross family ruled these islands with absolute authority before they became part of Australia.

the history of the cocos is very well documented by its owners whose children are alive today... there was no melanesian people on these islands.. its nothing to do with blackbirding..